Mask
by Kanki Youji
Summary: Sometimes, late at night, when you aren't around to see me scream or laugh or cry... I take off my skin. - A Misa Amane two-shot-ish-thing. Rather strange and vauge. Can't help it, I just love to get inside that girls head!
1. Mask

**A/N: **Well, it seems I'm not done with Misa yet. I was bored with this one, so it's pretty strange, for me anyway. I'm actually not sure if this is about Misa or me... the first part anyway. I wrote in one of my my-hands-move-and-words-pour-out-but-I-don't-have-control-over-what-I'm-making states. Until the very end I had no idea it was about Misa. The ending is in the next chapter, as this peice can kinda stand on it's own without it. Enjoy!

Sometimes, late at night, and you aren't around to hear me scream or laugh or cry, I'll turn off all the lights and take everything off.

I start with my face, pulling at that never-go-away smile that makes my cheeks ache and letting it slide to the floor. The next to go are my eyes that shine so bright. I pop them from their socket-apartments, careful to place them somewhere high up and clean. (I can't have them more clouded then they already are when I re-claim them)

Then I reach behind my head and begin to un-zip my skin. I start at the base of my neck and pull upward over my head and down my now-blank face. I trace its line, tugging on that zipper of light as it goes down my neck all the way to my navel, where it splits in two, tracing down my legs to the tip of my smallest toe. When the gentle pulling of the light-zipper is over, I shed my skin, peeling it off me as if it were a piece of clothing.

Sometimes I will stop there, but for the most part when I've come this far, I cast aside my muscles of bones as well. I let my blood pool it's self around my pedatarsals, painting them a lovely crimson, and pile my organs about as if in some paganistic bless'd circle. It is only when the whole of my body is lying down upon the floor like a dead animal that I feel truly alive, and the rush of pushing away from that limp pile of flesh is the closest thing to joy I have ever experienced.

I float about the room for a while, looking at the oh-so-familiar objects with new eyes, un-clouded by appearances. I see what they really are, but they are boring, so soon I turn to the insides of _my_ mind, picking apart my thoughts, feelings, and memories. I pick through subconscious urges and reactions and file them away for use later, or discard the ones I don't care for. I twirl around inside my head, dancing from fleeting thought to fleeting thought, singing whatever comes to me as loud as I can just because I can.

In time, light seeps back in and I return to the pile on the floor that makes up what I am in your eyes. I sigh silently and slip back into my bones. I call my blood back up, re-attach my muscles, and command my organs return to me. I pull my skin back on and wrap it around me tight, like a cloak against the winds of your gaze. Finally I put my face back on, first my eyes. _Pop pop_, back inside my skull they go, and I am seeing as I have been taught to see, everything solid and touchable and fake. Then I slip my mouth on and it forms the smile that has become me in so many ways.

And there it will stay, firm and in place throughout the day, so that you might see me as I have stood before you hundreds of times before. I will go out and laugh and talk and cling to your arm and smile up at you and tell you a thousand times that I love you. I will assure myself that you love me, and the tainted words will seep out like an old rehearsed song, repeated so many times that the meaning has faded out of them and it is but a habit to let them tumble out among the chaos of sentences that fill my day.

Then you will smile softly and pet my hair and whisper wonderful lies to me, and I will believe them for I am heavy and human and I _want_ them to be true, so, of course, they will be.

Such has it been, every day of my life, and such it will be until the day I die. A dance of half-realized thoughts and almost-felt emotions and should-be-truths that sing like the most beautiful song but echo emptily through the halls of my mind. I'll be you're perfect princess, just like you want, and I'll keep it up, because maybe someday you'll actually mean what you say. I'll keep my mask perfect and polished, just for you.

**A/N:** There it is! Like it? Hate it? Tell me what you think! The final bit is in the next chapter...


	2. An Ending

**A/N:** The 'official' ending. It's not nearly as good as the first part. Inspired by Keply/Angelaandminimix. Dedicated to Holly because she rocks.

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But today I cracked, just a little bit. My smile faltered as the one you hate the most walked into the room with you, silvery chain clinking as he moved in his strange, broken way. A great spider next to a shining unicorn, but the unicorn is rotten, wearing a fake horn upon its head, and no matter how he shines he will never be anything but an imitation, while the spider is made of light, and despite his grotesque form, he is beautiful.

And for a second I see this and I hesitate to run to your arms with my customary squeal of delight, wanting instead to cringe from you and fling myself into the safety of the spiders web. I shake it off and take my place by your side, well aware that while you are rotten, I am in the process of rotting and have no right to dirty the spider's clear white light with my shadows. As I attach myself to you as I always have and as I always will, the spider looks to me and smiles his small, twisted, blinding smile.

"Your mask is slipping"

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A/N:

Well? Thoughts? Criticism? Anything? Send it my way! 


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